The “Wretched Women” of the 800 metres

text by Sara Gross

Last fall, I had the opportunity to interview Canadian 800m runner Melissa Bishop, hot off her silver medal at the IAAF World Championship in Beijing. In the semi-final, Melissa ran 1.57.52 breaking Diane Cummins’s Canadian record after 14 years. Amazing.

In the back of my mind I had a vague recollection of a controversy concerning the women’s 800m… so I did a little digging and sure enough my inclination was right. According to popular folklore, when women’s track events were introduced in 1928, the athletes seemed so exhausted after the 800m race that women’s running events were limited to the 100m and 200m – for 32 years thereafter!

Most of the articles I found told the same tale of women collapsing and thus being perceived as “too weak” to handle distances of 800m and beyond.

At the time, reporters and physiologists alike declared that the exhaustion amongst the finishers was inevitable and hard to watch. One physiologist said: “woman has a layer of fat round the heart that makes attempts to emulate men positively dangerous. All women must realize that no amount of training will ever alter the physical condition.”

John Tunis, reporter for the New York Evening Times, who apparently witnessed the race, said the following: “Below us on the cinder path were 11 wretched women, 5 of whom dropped out before the finish, while 5 collapsed after reaching the tape.”

Due to reports such as these, the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF) held a meeting a week later. Some felt that women’s track events should be canceled completely.  In the end, the 800m was dropped from the program, along with any possibility for women to run longer than 200m at the Games until 1960.

Nowadays, it is quite normal to see either gender collapsed on the track after any distance of racing.

Most of the articles I found told the same tale of women collapsing and thus being perceived as “too weak” to handle distances of 800m and beyond.

And then I found actual footage of the 800m race from 1928.

For starters, there were 9 women in the race, not 11, as per John Tunis. All 9 finished the race. There were no DNFs (Did Not Finish). One woman stumbled just after the finish and was helped to her feet by an official. If anything, by comparison to current-day track events, the women showed very few signs of exhaustion. Nowadays, it is quite normal to see either gender collapsed on the track after any distance of racing.

The 1928 Olympic women’s final was won by Lina Radke of Germany in 2.16. Eight other brave and pioneering women ran alongside her.  I can’t help but ask myself, what exactly did the reporters and doctors from 1928 think they saw? Did they really watch the same race? It is hard to imagine that after the camera turns off, those runners, who are all upright and fine at the finish, all collapsed in a heap? They say that seeing is believing, but sometimes what we believe is what we see.

And now we have the present day controversy that surrounds 800m runner Caster Semenya who is expected to win gold in Rio,* possibly setting new World and Olympic records in the process. Yet what we see on the screen is a woman who, at least by modern western standards, looks distinctly masculine and so we are prone to believe that her advantage is so great that maybe she should not be allowed to race at all.

And like that fateful day in 1928, science backs up our assumptions by claiming that extra testosterone in Semenya’s system makes her a little bit too much “man” and not enough “woman.” And since women are a “protected category” in sport we doubt her eligibility.

The question is, are we believing what we see or are we seeing what we believe?

How could multiple doctors, journalists and spectators watch that race in 1928 and see women so exhausted that they felt it was appropriate to ban women from running more than 200m for years to come?

Are we watching a feat of incredible athleticism by an amazing female athlete or will the myth of the “wretched women” prevail?

As I watch the 800m final in Rio, I will take a moment to reflect, not just on Semenya’s appearance, but on my own assumptions about masculinity and femininity and what makes a woman a woman and a man a man.

After all, who gets to make the final judgement on who is a woman and who is a man and how clearly are we really seeing the race that is before us on the track? Are we watching a feat of incredible athleticism by an amazing female athlete or will the myth of the “wretched women” prevail?

In 1928, journalists and physiologists alike were blinded by cultural assumptions about what it means to be a woman. Are we? Perhaps it’s time we adjusted our perception, corrected the message and leave behind misguided assumptions that punish female athletes.